


Blood on her blue dress

by speia



Series: The Literary Lab (Experimental Original Works) [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Gen, Mention of Drug Abuse, Not A Happy Ending, Not Happy, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War, believe me or not but i love my oc, it's a bit metaphysical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 15:45:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15710295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speia/pseuds/speia
Summary: A good friend once told me: you are memory, without them we equal nothing.





	Blood on her blue dress

We are not good creatures. After all, weren’t we born from the despair of men? Well, that’s just a theory. Some say we were born from something - or someone - else. Who knows? More importantly: who cares?

 

Start by asking yourself: was it really worth it? Did you live your life to the fullest? The memories of your past life, do you cherish them or do you resent them? They are the only proofs you were once alive. So even if you hate them, you can’t really reject them. Unless you’re ready to reject your entire self. 

 

Maybe you can’t reject them. But you’re still forgetting. Time passes by and you can only forget. Memories are only meant to fade away.

 

***

 

Don’t get attached. This was the very principle you chose to live your life by. You just didn’t want to get hurt, you just didn’t want to suffer. But you were human, and like all humans you needed to connect. You wanted to connect. So when he called your name on that bright sunny day, you had no choice but to turn around and face him. How many years had it been? Many, way too many to be numbered. That boy that chased you in a school yard was now wearing the uniform. He was now weaponized. And you could count his stars, and you could count the small colored stripes on his chest. You could count of much he had risked his life, how much he had killed and was rewarded for it.

 

The people often think their soldiers look great in their war attire: it reassures them, makes them feel like a powerful nation. You were no better and you found him very gorgeous. So you smiled. And so he smiled back. 

 

But you wanted to connect. So you bound and bound again even if he was now a mass murderer. You couldn’t care less. To be honest, at that time, you never truly realized what it meant to be enrolled. For you, at that time, it was just a splendid uniform and a too-absent friend. At that time, it was just too many phone calls that annoyed you. Even if you were hearing gunshots in the distance, that reality never became yours.

 

Until it did.

 

He never showed up at your place before so you were utterly surprised. He was wearing his ceremony outfit and you teased him about a promotion even if no star had been added since the last time. And then he said it: his best friend was dead, killed in the line of duty. He told you all and started to cry and never did he look more beautiful in your eyes now he was shattered, broken, unable to be whole again. No need to say you hated yourself for it. Neither to precise how much of a common thing funeral sex was during these times of war. 

 

Until it was no longer funeral but life-support sex. A very common thing as well. Some people even call it  _ love _ . 

 

If only you knew it was just the beginning of a dreadful series of losses, maybe you would have taken it differently. Maybe you would have treated him differently. Maybe you would have found the strength to tell him how you really felt about him. Maybe you would have confessed. But you didn’t and you couldn’t know. So you just endured. And when he lost and lost his friends one by one, you were here and here forever and always. Static, unshaken. You became his lover, his confident, his motherly figure. 

 

Until you became his wife because this was what society expected of you, of him. Until you became his home to return to. Society expected you to have kids as well but you never found yourself pregnant. You never looked for the reason why and neither did he. You were enough for him to worry about after all. His life was already a war zone and he was not even sure he’d come back alive. 

 

Do you remember that day when his war came knocking at your door?

Do you remember that day he came back alive, only to find death?

 

War never became your reality, you always rejected it. You knew it was coming closer and closer each day, how could you not? All those funerals, all those colorful stripes on his chest, the worry on everyone’s faces. Everyone’s but yours. You stayed pretty oblivious to everything, this was your choice. If you started to care, you couldn’t stay that firm. And if you couldn’t stay firm, he would crumble down. And you didn’t want that. Because, in the end, you might have never told him but you loved him. 

 

You loved him more than you loved your own self. 

 

But life didn’t leave you with a choice. It left you with your own self and yourself only. And it was your fault, and you were the only one to blame. Because he too might have never told you but he loved you. He loved you more than his own self. 

 

Until he gave himself away. And without a self, one can’t love.

 

You were out on that day, even if he told you not to. You heard the enemy had invaded your town, and still war didn’t feel real. 

 

Until it felt terribly and painfully real. 

 

When he noticed you on the street, he rushed to you, yelling at you to get home asap. An officer of his rank, such an easy target, every enemy sniper would have taken him down. How absurd, he survived the most dangerous situations and campaigns to die on a street he was taking everyday, arguing with his wife. He died mad at you. He died without even hearing you whisper a sweet postcoital I love you. Not a single one. 

 

When you heard the gunshot, you had already lost everything. And it didn’t matter if in the end you won the war. And it didn’t matter if he was seen as a hero. And it didn’t matter if they praised his bravery, and your courage. At that very moment, he was so close your clothes got stained. And on your blue dress, the blood looked quite dark. It was only when you lost him that you realized he meant the world for you. 

 

Why did you have to lose him to understand how much you needed him as well?

Why, now he was gone, you were dying to tell him ‘I love you’? 

 

And then after…

What was after again? Oh yes, you don’t really remember. Of course, it’d be all fuzzy. 

 

People started to pity you. And at the same time to spread gossips about you: why were you outside on that day? Some said you were coming home from your lover’s, some said you had an urgent errand to make. Apparently you needed a reason to be out. It was unbearable, your whole existence had become unbearable. You couldn’t be that respected officer’s wife they wanted you to remain: your husband was dead. Your reason to live was gone.

 

And that substance had such a sweet name, she had to be a life savior.

Heroin.

 

Your downfall was quick. Terribly quick. You could have died on that day, with him. The sniper could have shot you as well. You were frozen, staring in blank, holding the man you loved, in complete shock. He could have killed you as well. But he didn’t, and you were relieved you didn’t die that time. A completely normal feeling and you felt guilty for it. You were just trying to escape reality at first. Being a little high so you wouldn’t have to think. 

 

To think about how absurd life was. To think about how stupidly you lost him.

Forever.

 

And you were able not to think for a moment. Until it took you bigger and bigger doses for less and less effect. It’s okay if you don’t remember about this moment of your life, you weren’t probably not very pretty to look at. And not very pleasant to be around. You lived the rest of your life as a ghost, unable to take your own life. You didn’t want to live anymore but you didn’t want to die either. 

 

Until that day you were a little too tired and the drug a little too pure. And you were no longer afraid. 

 

It was white. And pure. And you were no longer feeling. And you were no longer thinking. In the last flash of consciousness you wondered if things could have been different: if you had a child with him, would have things be this way? Or would have you got up and fight? For the first and last time in your life you regretted not to have tried harder. If you were a mother, you would have never allowed yourself to become such wreck.

 

And death was smiling at you. And you welcomed it with open arms.

 

***

 

Do you resent it, your past life? Do you hate her, your past self? You don't know, you say. But you shouldn't resent it, and you shouldn't hate her. They both made you who you are. They both made you that sweet and caring motherly creature you've become.

 

Soon, you'll forget you were once human.

 

Death smiled at you, and you smiled at her. So death you became. But a benevolent death. So when they die, you smile at them, like a mother would. And so they know they are not alone.

 

Neither are you.

Not anymore. 


End file.
